Friday, January 25, 2013

Over the last year, I’ve become quite sensitive to a few
words which, when strung together in a particular order, makes me want to break
skin. In truth, this sensitivity has always been simmering under the surface of
my skin, but only recently has it been profitable for me to actually get to the
heart of them.

“I love my job.”

This particular sentence makes me day dream about the
Japanese tradition of seppuku and how it’s infinitely better than having to sit
across from someone who takes pride in “loving their job.” Don’t get me wrong,
loving what we do – for a living or otherwise – is the one thing that separates
us from the TV-sedated robots we call a citizenry. What makes me gag, however,
is the acceptance that a “job” is the highest we can aspire to despite infinite
proof to the contrary.

The unfortunate truth
is that, for our whole lives, we have been told that our greatest achievement
will be creating wealth for another in exchange for the comfort of a monthly
salary. That monthly salary would be a great thing to work for if we were
guaranteed that it would never be taken away from us – the erstwhile “government
job” – and that it would be enough to give us the creature comforts we want –
the high-end corporate salary. And here’s where the problem lies – in order to
make that high-end corporate salary come with the security of a government job
(seriously, whom are we kidding? There is no security in the corporate world!)
we spend years answering to someone else, fearing consequences of our actions,
drowning our frustrations in end-of-the-day drinking parties, dreading the next
day of the raised eyebrow from colleagues when you land up 20 minutes late to
do nothing really of significance, and continue the cycle over and over for 40
odd years of your life while planning a relaxing retirement that we will be too
old to enjoy.

Add to this messed up mix a bunch of motivational speakers
encouraging us to take ‘ownership’ of companies that will fire us in a
heartbeat, and self-help books exhorting us to believe that if we can’t change
our circumstances, then we should learn to change ourselves so that we can find
peace (Stockholm Syndrome anyone?), we have no choice but to keep plugging away,
convinced that we love our jobs and that it's a good thing.

When we were kids, we were told by our grown up parents that
when we grew up, we could do whatever we wanted. We dreamed of flying and
living in rooms filled with candy and not ever making our beds. In the secret
spaces of our hearts, we dreamed of somehow making a difference – as an
astronaut or a superhero. Not many of us thought that when we grew up, we will
sit in front of a computer in a cubicle and answer to another scary grown up
called “Boss”.

And that’s the tragedy – not that we “love our jobs” but
that we genuinely believe that this is as good as it gets.

“Can I come over?”

No you may not. Not unless you want to come over and talk.
Just talk. Or if you want to cook me a meal. Or tell me you love me. If you’re
not doing any of that, if you’re not willing to find out who I am, if you’re
not willing to stay in touch (not just 30 minutes before the inevitable
question), if you’re not getting me soup for when I’m ill, if you’re not
sitting on the couch and reading a book while my head rests on your lap as I
read another, if you’re not waking up with me in the afternoon and saying “what
shall we do today?”… If you’re not doing any of that, then no, you can’t come
over.

Because if you can’t handle the boring mundane bits of me,
you surely don’t deserve the best of me.

“I’m happy not doing
anything…”

Oh. My. God. I know it seems a bit contradictory coming
right after the job-rant, but this phrase ranks lower than the proverbial dregs
in the barrel of the loser party. Why? Because the sayer of these infinitely
dumb words doesn’t have the right to be ‘happy’ about doing nothing.

Unlike what popular literature has to say, happiness while
certainly being a state of zen, is also an emotion that is earned. You can’t be
genuinely happy, if you are not contributing in some way. If you’re not earning
a living to support your family, if you’re not creating art that makes people
feel not alone, if you’re not making it possible for strangers to change their
life around, if you’re not using whatever talents you have to improve the world
that’s quickly going to the bottom of the heap, then you don’t have the right
to bask in the ‘happiness’ that this world has given you the ability to feel.

Recently, I met an acquaintance who told me that he’s been
working on a screenplay for the past few months. He told me that he had bought
a few books from where he was getting a few pointers, and that he was
determined to finish it before taking on a new project. I asked him how long he
worked in a day. He said, ‘3-4 hours.” And what do you do with the rest of the
time? “I sleep. Or watch TV. I like to just rest because I know that writing
requires a calm mind.” He is married to a nurse, with a baby on the way, and he
has the gall to say, “I’m happy not doing anything right now because I have to
give this my best shot.”

The same day, another friend looks at me beatifically
through the haze of a cigarette smoke and justifies being jobless – and not
even looking – for the major part of this century by saying “It’s a miracle I’m
even alive, given how much I’ve abused my body. I’m happy just sitting back and
enjoying this moment.”

Noble intentions, right? All about gratitude and such? Bullshit.
You don’t have the luxury of being happy when – forget the world – your own
house is not in order. I’m not saying that certain activities rank higher than
others, I’m just gawking at the complacency of the person who seems to be
extremely comfortable wasting whatever talents s/he has been endowed with and
following the path of being ‘happy.’ If people without limbs can find a
purpose, if they can affect others lives for the better, if they can accomplish
physical feats beyond compare, they are the ones who have earned the right to
be happy not doing anything because they have already done enough. For everyone else, it’s the easy cop-out. The
internal dialogue goes something like this: “I’m happy not doing anything…

…because I don’t want to find out for a fact that I can’t.
If I want something more, and I work for it, and I fail, then everyone will
know that I couldn’t get what I wanted, and I would be a failure. So it’s
better by and large to want nothing, because that way, with the least amount of
effort, I’m likely to get it.”

And at the end of the day, I find myself wondering if we’ve
made it okay as a community to train ourselves to be happy with anything… It
would explain a lot, including the steady decline of the human race.

“I can’t do this.”

If at one end of the pendulum are people who don’t want to
achieve more, the other end is filled to the brim with people who believe that
they can’t. And it’s not just them; their most beloved believe that they can’t
do it – whatever “it” is.

Just yesterday, I met a woman who had started her own little
venture a few years ago – something to do with providing errand girls for
working women – “Do anything that needs to be done while you go ahead and be
awesome!” As a concept it was really great, and a lot of investors found
themselves keen. However, a few months into it, facing challenges at the home
and the work front, she finally gave it up because – as her family said – “Baby,
it’s destroying you. Why don’t you just give it up if it’s so hard?”

Not one of them said, “Tell me what needs to be done, I’ll
work with you.” Sure, offers to babysit
or make dinner abounded but a new venture doesn’t just need handmaidens, it
needs partners to bear some of the actual weight. It’s not really their fault.
In a culture that views anything that women try as a “hobby”, or something to
keep them busy or just ‘silly’, we have got trained to not reach out with help
because ‘it won’t last’. This becomes so deeply ingrained that often, we end up
looking at ourselves through the same refracting lenses of prejudice and be
absolutely certain that ‘I can’t do this.’

The truth is, no single person can do it alone. But the truth also is, the people who care about
you and your dreams the most are probably not the ones you believe they are. In
fact, more often than not, your closest friends and family will let you down
the fastest. But the most unfortunate part of this equation is that they will
make it okay for you to give up on yourself because, after all, they ‘know’
you.

“I’m not good with
people…”

Honestly speaking, I have been guilty of saying that so
often in my life that this is just the karmic cycle coming back to haunt me. The
simple fact is, nobody is any good with people – we just learn to fake it as
well as we can because picking our way through the mine-laden miasma of
emotions and intelligence is a tough one. But just like everything else in our
lives, this too becomes better with practice. There is no excuse for ‘not being
good with people’ particularly when all our feelings of well-being and happiness
springs from the people around us – our colleagues, our friends, our families,
the stranger serving us coffee.

And there’s enough literature out there in the
world to help us – in fact, most of the religious texts are in fact instruction
booklets on how to deal with people. Be kind, be respectful, don’t steal your
neighbor’s wife etc – all clearly written down as a guideline on how to be
better at this. But, just like everything else that was written in an
instruction manual, you actually have to do the things to experience the
benefit. And the advantages of it are incalculable. You want a new job – boom! People.
A raise? More people. A new dress – a designer
who is *drum beats* a person! You want to create wealth? What’s the biggest
resource we have – gasp! People.

The secret weapon is ofcourse the fact that no one is good
at it. Some people have just spent more time practicing.

“I’m just not the kind of person who…”

Call it what you will. At the end of the day, we end up
limiting ourselves much more than we ever give ourselves credit for. Words like
“money isn’t what drives me” trip out a person’s mouth usually when s/he hasn’t
ever made the kind of money that would make a significant difference to anyone’s
life. “I’m more of an in-the-moment kind of person” is the standard response of
anyone who is asked to think about and take responsibility for more than just his
/ her immediate requirements of food, recreation and shopping. “I’m best at what I’m doing” is a phrase used
mostly by people who haven’t done more than the one thing in their lives and
haven’t discovered their immense promise. We forget that there was a time in
our lives when we weren’t sure of who we were and what we were about and those
were the most adventurous and rewarding years that we look back on with the
greatest affection.

But just as a few sentences have made it to my hate list,
there are a few more phrases that make me light up from inside. “Don’t worry,
we’ll do this together” is high up there. Not said by many, and meant by even
fewer, when I look around at the unlikely people – strangers almost – who said
these words to me and meant it, I’m grateful that someone out there is looking
out for me. “I’d like to see where this goes..” said while holding my hand,
looking into my eyes, letting me imagine a future. It didn’t last, but atleast
there was a promise, an intention – something that there’s so little of these
days.

The fact is, I suppose, we all have challenges that we face
internally and externally. We face disappointments and betrayals, we celebrate
victories no matter how small. But one thing I’ve learned over the last year is
this – While many can convince us of how worthless we are, how devoid of talent
or ability, we allow no one to convince us of our worth or our immense
capability.